Monday, April 18, 2016

Bathroom Bills, Bigotry, and Bioethics

HB 2 should incite the worry, and the anger, of bioethicists on several fronts. It is unclear how transgender people could even comply with the letter of the law, let alone its spirit. When transgender men who are read as men – but whose birth certificates say “female”–- are compelled to use the women’s restroom, this creates precisely the “problem,”- i.e., the idea of men invading a women’s only space, that the law purports to protect against. The law’s defenders have invented an imaginary threat to shore up support for the legislation, insisting that women are endangered if transgender women, who are routinely misgendered as “men” in this rhetoric, are allowed to share these spaces. While a 2013 survey by the Williams Institute of UCLA School of Law found that “roughly 70% of trans people have reported being denied entrance, assaulted or harassed while trying to use a restroom,” there is no evidence of violence perpetrated by transgender people in restrooms.